


Just Some Firsts

by TheGardenOfEden



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Firsts, Fluff, I don't know how else to tag this, M/M, canonverse, pure fluff, this is literally a mess don't kill me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-29 04:07:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16256348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGardenOfEden/pseuds/TheGardenOfEden
Summary: There's a first for everything.Keith slowly realizes he likes Lance and the mess continues from there.





	Just Some Firsts

The first time Keith remembered Lance was the first night in the castle.

It had been an exhausting day, what with finding Shiro, being involuntarily flown into the far reaches of space, tracking down a group of sentient robot lions, and fighting an entire alien battleship. It was hard to believe that when Keith laid down in the unfamiliar bed to go to sleep, he had woken up that morning in his own bed in the desert of Arizona. It seemed like it had been days, months even since then. He couldn’t fathom that it had been that morning.

All the same, he figured he would just go along with whatever he was being pulled into now. He had Shiro back, he still had a place to sleep, the food was free, and hell, he was even a pilot now. Which was all he had wanted to be since he had been enrolled at the Garrison and met Shiro. And now here he was, maybe not in the exact spaceship he was picturing back when he was thirteen, but he had a ship all the same.

And now he was part of a team, which seemed foreign to him. Back at the Garrison he had been assigned a team, and he flat out refused to really be a part of it. Only ever truly talking to them in the simulator when conversation was safe and couldn’t be about anything other than whatever fake mission they were on. But now he was living with a bunch of strangers essentially, in the middle of space, and they were his teammates. There wasn’t going to be an opportunity to ignore them the way he could at the Garrison. Especially not with Shiro around.

Shiro had always pushed Keith to make friends with the other cadets, and no matter how hard Keith pushed back and refused and did everything he could to get out of it, Shiro never stopped trying. And now that he was in space with nowhere to run and hide, it looked like he was going to have no choice.

He was happy Shiro was here, of course, the man had practically raised him. Keith used to secretly refer to him as his older brother when he was forced to talk to the other cadets at the Garrison and when word had gotten back to Shiro, he didn’t seem the least bit opposed to the idea, just laughing at Keith for being so worried about his reaction. Princess Allura and Coran were complete strangers to him, but they were complete strangers to everyone here. And they were aliens. The thought seemed so foreign to Keith as he stared at the ceiling of his room, that he was now friends with aliens. If he could call them friends, he’d only known them a day.

His mind wandered to Lance. When he first appeared in the makeshift hospital, claiming he was the one who was going to save Shiro, he had mentioned that they were at the Garrison together. But Keith couldn’t remember him at all. To Keith, Lance was a complete stranger. He tried to find any sort of memory from back then that held any traces of the blue paladin, but came up blank. Lance’s friends from the Garrison weren’t of any help either. Pidge oddly enough reminded him of Matthew Holt, one of the other people to go missing with Shiro on the Kerberos mission, but other than that, there was no familiarity about him. He had never met this kid before, that much he knew, so Pidge must’ve joined the class after Keith had left. Hunk seemed familiar, and although Keith couldn’t figure out where he’d seen him before, the friendly personality felt like a reminder of his Garrison days.

Keith sighed, deciding he was too tired to try and think through it that night. Maybe he would be able to figure out why Hunk’s laugh was a comforting familiarity or why Lance claimed they knew each other tomorrow when he wasn’t half delirious. He let his eyes flutter shut, and let his mind sink into quiet darkness of the castle.

Just as he was starting to fall asleep, his mind drifted softly to a face he remembered from the Garrison, looking up at him with large eyes. It was right after he had punched James. In the split second before he was dragged off by Iverson, he made eye contact with the bluest eyes he’d ever seen, and the boy’s face stared back at him with a look of both wonder and fear. He never talked to the boy after that, but he did remember those eyes.

His thoughts followed the eyes as they grew bigger, full of no longer wonder but annoyance, and filled a different face in his memories holding up the other side of Shiro. He shot up, nearly hitting his head on the low ceiling over his bed.

“Oh shit,” he whispered sharply.

He never mentioned the memory to Lance, but he looked at the other paladin in a new light, and he definitely paid attention to his eyes.

 

////

 

The first time Keith realized Lance was his friend was after the food fight.

Hearing Lance say “I actually don’t hate you right now” made his stomach flip in an unfamiliar way. He wondered if that was what it felt like to make friends. But he brushed off the thought before he could realize that Hunk and Pidge didn’t have the same effect as Lance did

Being able to form Voltron immediately after was an exhilarating experience. Sure, they had been able to do it before, but as Allura had said, they were only able to do that out of sheer necessity and fear. This time it meant that the team had bonded, it meant that he had friends now. Not just acquaintances or teammates or people he was stuck with. Real friends, and for once, he didn’t want to fight it.

He was mostly happy that he could say Lance was his friend, even if the blue paladin swore up and down that they were just rivals, Keith knew. They couldn’t have formed Voltron unless Lance considered Keith as a friend. He was happy bickering and letting Lance annoy him, as long as he knew that deep down, they were friends.

While he lay in bed that night, he thought of the thrill in Lance’s eyes as they stood handcuffed together. The excited blue had been so overwhelming he had almost missed the boy’s massive smile, and almost didn’t hear his words. But he didn’t miss it, and a small smile was now settled on his lips, only witness to the ceiling.

 

//////

 

The first time Keith knew he liked Lance was just before the bonding moment.

The fear he felt for his friend when he saw Lance lying unconscious in front of the shattered crystal. It was the type of fear he would feel for any of his teammates, the same fear he felt when he had yelled at Pidge earlier when he threatened to leave the team, the same fear he felt when Shiro was captured all that time ago. But it was something else as well.

It was a stranger emotion, one that surpassed fear almost entirely. It was a subtle terror of losing something - or someone - before even really having it. All the quarrels, and the friendship, and the hidden, pushed down emotions for Lance suddenly disappeared, and all that was left was the blue paladin lying on the floor in front of him and the deep horror that Keith would never really come to understand.

After that revelation, getting stuck outside the castle with Allura and no way in, while Lance, to his knowledge, was still unconscious. That was hell. He would have been unnerved to not be able to help his teammates no matter what, he had leveled with himself. But no matter how convincing, he knew that not being able to help Lance, especially when Lance couldn’t help himself, made it all that much worse.

He wanted to feel useful, he wanted to be able to do something. That’s why he’d left the castle in the first place. He went to go defend the village from Sendak’s men to keep his mind off the dying paladin. It had only proved to make things worse when it was really only broken sentries hung up on poles. Now all Keith could do was hope that Pidge or the mice could find a way to stop Sendak and let them in.

Allura seemed just as unnerved as Keith, though he was sure for different reasons. She at least had a way of channeling the fear and nervous energy into something useful, and he watched her with a twinge of jealousy as she shut her eyes in concentration while she communicated with the mice. He banged his fists against the barrier again, not knowing what to do, and pictured an unconscious Lance somewhere in the castle. His stomach churned, and he frowned deeply.

 

/////

 

The first time Keith realized Lance liked him back was while he was with the Blades.

He had joined the Blades in the first place to make sure Lance was happy. Full time, at least. He had joined the Blades originally to find himself and to learn about his heritage, but he had quit Voltron and joined full time to make Lance happy.

Lance had come to him just after Shiro reappeared asking about how they were going to rearrange who gets what lion. The blue paladin looked so sad as he announced to Keith that he would step down for the sake of the team that Keith wanted to do everything in his power to never let the look cross his face again. He stayed up all night that night trying to think of solutions, and staring at his pinky.

He distanced himself slowly, making more of an effort with the Blades, and less of an effort with Voltron. He talked privately to Kolivan about securing a permanent place. The older Galra seemed surprised at the query, or at least, as surprised as his stoic, never-changing face would allow. He assured Keith that he would have a spot, but warned that without Voltron, they couldn’t defeat Zarkon. Keith had assured Kolivan that no matter what he chose, the universe would have Voltron.

Then his lack of effort became noticeable to Shiro, and once Shiro noticed, the whole team noticed. Shiro wasn’t one to keep things to himself unless absolutely necessary, and this was not an exception. His anger at Keith for not trying to help the team was not going to be a private matter. Keith was okay with that, it wouldn’t seem so sudden when he did leave. Every time all six of them were present, Lance was visibly uncomfortable and more unsure of himself. Keith wanted more than anything to make that go away. As soon as it was proven that Shiro could pilot Black again, Keith took the first opportunity to leave.

But while he was with the Blades, every time his face would appear on the screen of the castle, and his eyes would look around at his former teammates, no matter what Kolivan was saying next to him, he could see Lance visibly light up. And every meeting, he and Lance would make awkward eye contact for just a second too long. Keith would always be the first to look away, but he never failed to notice Lance’s lips twitch upwards fractionally, and it gave Keith a sliver of hope that he didn’t know he needed. He pushed it down the way he used to push down his feelings. It didn’t have to mean anything, they were just friends. Hunk and Pidge looked happy to see him on screen too. But deep down he knew it wasn’t in the same way.

When he closed his eyes at night in the unfamiliar bed, he traced the lines of Lance’s face that he had memorized and thought about the smile all too much.

 

//////

 

The first time Keith admitted that he liked Lance was to his mother on the space whale, riding though the time rift.

He hadn’t intended to, but there’s not much one can hide when the flashes of light brought back spasms of memories and flashes of the future. He avoided Krolia for a day after the time rift had shown them his memories of Lance. They came all at once and with a surge of emotion he wasn’t prepared to face after all that time. He had been on the space whale for nearly two years at that point, but not one memory of Lance had shown up until that point. And then it was all of them.

They saw the bonding moment, and the conversation in Keith’s room. They saw the food fight, and the way Keith grinned at Lance whenever he brought it up for months afterward. They saw Keith devising a plan to leave, and the way he stared at the other boy when he finally did, a sorry excuse of a goodbye. They saw the small smiles they exchanged and the silent staring during Kolivan’s briefings. They saw Keith staring silently at his pinky in his familiar castle bed long after he should have been asleep, smiling way too softly to hide the way he felt. They saw Lance’s blue eyes.

When the flash ended, his heart ached.

He’d forgotten how much he missed Lance. He missed all of the paladins, but he really really missed Lance.

When the flash ended, he glanced back at his mother before disappearing with Kosmo for the whole day.

When he returned, Krolia was waiting for him. Keith said nothing, but silently accepted the comforting hand she placed on his shoulder. He went to bed early and dreamed of Lance.

It wasn’t until two days later that his mother finally brought it up.

“Who was that? In your memory?” she asked it quietly, as if she was scared Keith would disappear again. He sighed.

“Lance.”

She focused her gaze on him quizzically as he prodded the fire, “The blue paladin?”

“Yeah,” he responded dryly, “You can tell by the blue armor he was wearing in half of it.”

“You love him,” she said as more of a statement than a question. Keith whipped his head up to stare at her. She gazed back levelly.

“No, I-” he fumbled to find the right words, “You- he- No.”

Krolia simply raised her eyebrows, but said nothing.

Keith gave in, “I don’t love him. But I really really like him, it’s just not love. Not yet.” She nodded in understanding and finally turned her gaze away from him, remaining quiet. Keith knew that she was staying silent to get him to talk. It had been two years, she had picked up on that much about him. He still spoke anyway.

“I miss him,” he started again, “I miss him a lot. And I forgot how much I miss him because it’s easy to just push the feelings down when I’m not being shown memories with him in them, but now I am, and it just keeps reminding me of how much I miss him. And I don’t regret joining the Blade, I don’t regret leaving, you saw, I did it for him. Plus, I learned about who I am, and I met you. But there’s this huge part of me that just wants to go back, that just wants to see him and talk to him again.” He didn’t realize he was stabbing the fire until he nearly burned his hand. He pulled back abruptly.

Krolia didn’t say much more, and neither did Keith. It was okay that way. She understood, and he knew she did. Nothing more needed to be said.

They reached the other side of the time rift about a week later.

And when they rushed back to the castle ship for the first time since Keith left, he felt all of the accumulated tension in his body dissipate at the sound of Lance’s voice over the video screen.

 

////////////

 

The first time Keith told Lance about his feelings was after they had finally made it home.

It was weird being back at the Garrison, and even weirder to see the other paladins with their families.

After he had tried to help Hunk find his parents, he was left with little to do. All the other paladins seemed to find things to do to keep busy. Shiro helped Sam and Iverson build the Atlas and prepare for the upcoming battle. Hunk and Pidge made themselves busy trying to decode the castle’s database. Allura was busy making an arm for Shiro. Lance was preoccupied with his family. He was the leader of Voltron, but he didn’t feel very much like a leader as he wandered the hallways of the Garrison complex aimlessly and completely alone.

It was one of these days that he bumped into Lance, or really, Lance bumped into him, as he was wandering the halls. Lance had backed out of a door, and collided directly into Keith, who stumbled backwards in surprise.

“Sorry,” Lance mumbled, instinctively reaching his arms out to steady Keith.

“No problem,” Keith responded, tensing at the contact. Lance looked up at his voice, and his eyes brightened fractionally. Keith tried not to read into it.

“Oh, Keith, I was just looking for you,” Lance dropped his arms and Keith’s shoulders relaxed a little, “We should.. We should talk,”

Keith raised an eyebrow, his heart pounding in his chest, “What about?” These kinds of conversations were never good.

“Come walk with me,” Lance smiled tentatively. He turned and started walking down the hallway, pausing only to check if Keith was following him.

They walked in silence for a few minutes, Lance a few feet in front of Keith and looking back every few seconds to check that Keith was still with him. Keith felt himself being dragged along by the blue eyes, silently willing Lance to turn again so he could catch another glimpse.

Lance finally stopped in the now empty canteen. It was well past when anyone would be stopping in for a snack, and as Keith looked around he realized that it really was the only secluded place in the complex for the time being. He looked at Lance only to find the brilliant blue staring back at him with intensity. He almost gasped, but held it in for fear of embarrassing himself.

“I’m sorry, Keith,” Lance started and Keith felt his mouth open, an apology was the last thing he was expecting. “I shouldn’t have said all those things when we were stranded back there. It crossed a line, and I’m sorry. I don’t… I don’t actually want you to stay away. In fact, I wish you hadn’t left in the first place.”

Keith floundered for a moment, trying to come up with some response but his brain just kept repeating “he wanted you to stay.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Keith finally whispered, he felt too small and vulnerable in the big room to talk any louder, “I deserved it,” he saw Lance open his mouth to protest but persisted anyway, “What you said was true. That I ran away. I wish I hadn’t but it felt right at the time. It made sense to me.”

Truthfully, Keith had spent many nights lying awake thinking about Lance’s words, and going through his actions and regrets. He knew Lance was right, and that made it hurt so much more.

“What did you have to run away from?” Lance asked, his voice equally as low as Keith’s, his blue eyes looked pained, “I know you thought you didn’t have the right to be the leader once Shiro got back, but it’s not like you to just.. quit. That can’t be what it was, and I can’t for the life of me figure anything else out. So what were you running from?”

Lance looked almost desperate, but Keith didn’t let himself believe that, he didn’t let himself read into the sadness in the other paladin’s face, or the thick emotion in his eyes. He just took a deep breath and closed his own eyes.

“You.”

“Me?” he heard Lance echo is an even quieter voice, “You were running from me?”

Keith nodded, but didn’t open his eyes. He was certain he looked pretty weird right now, but at that point he couldn’t care less. It was all he could do to keep the years of emotions pouring out of him and streaming down his cheeks. He was about to lose the one friendship he hoped he never would.

“Yeah,” his voice came out quieter and more broken than he expected it to. There was a few long seconds of silence as Lance seemed to be at a loss for words.

“What did I do that made you run away?” Lance’s voice came out small and uncertain and hurt. More uncertain than Keith had ever heard it before.

“Because I like you, Lance. And I didn’t know what to do,” Keith opened his eyes in time to see the shock register on Lance’s face for a brief second before he turned and ran out the door, leaving a dumbfounded Lance standing in the middle of the empty canteen.

 

//////////////

 

The first time Lance told Keith about his feelings was a few seconds later.

Lance came running out of the canteen after Keith as soon as he had processed what the other boy had said. Keith heard the doors swing open and shut loudly, and Lance’s voice call his name, but he pressed himself against the wall in the small alcove he had found and hoped that Lance would just pass him.

To his dismay, Lance found the spot almost immediately, and appeared before Keith with wide blue eyes. Keith shrunk into himself, but kept his eyes on Lance’s.

“You like me,” Lance said, almost disbelieving, “You liked me way back when we were just red and blue paladins, and you like me now.”

Keith wished in vain that the ground would open up below him and swallow him whole. It didn’t and he was left staring at Lance’s wide eyes. If he wasn’t so sure he was about to get brutally rejected, he would say that they looked almost excited. He didn’t say anything, just stared back at the other boy.

Lance took a step closer, and Keith tried to push himself further into the wall.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Lance announced, and Keith barely had time to be surprised before Lance’s lips were on his. Lance was gone again before he even had time to respond and so Keith stood there in full shock with his arms wrapped around himself and Lance standing in front of him with a smile.

“You like me?” Keith asked quietly, hopefully. Lance laughed and took one of Keith’s hands, pulling it away from Keith’s side. His blue eyes danced playfully, and Keith watched them openly.

“Of course I do, you idiot,” Lance pulled Keith toward him and away from the wall, “I alway have.”

Keith wrapped his arms around Lance’s neck and smiled at him. Lance leaned in again and gave Keith plenty of time to respond this time.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've written since middle school, so be nice. Voltron re-inspired me, and I'm really glad about that. I hope y'all enjoyed. It took a while to write this, I'm still getting back into the swing of writing.
> 
> But in better news, I have a multi-chapter Klance fic in the works, and it's actually going to be beta-ed (unlike this one) so keep your eyes out. I'm trying to decide when to post chapter 1.


End file.
